palmstar poppy
songs in search of love lost at sea
2007
VOICE & PIANO/ENSEMBLE
VOICE | PIANO | HARP | CELLO | VIBRAPHONE
A seafarer boards his ship, the Palmstar Poppy, in search of the legendary land of Woop-Woop, a wonderland believed to exist somewhere beneath the great oceans.
His voyage is sparked by a voice heard in his dreams inviting him to sail south to Wishsong Bay, where he is to follow the sun and look for the place where the last rains of Woop-Woop fall.
The seafarer recalls the fateful midnight voyage of his lover who disappeared whilst fishing for shooting stars to illuminate the mountain caves where they would meet later that night. His lover never returned. And from that night on, the sun, moon and stars never appeared again, leaving behind an eternity of impenetrable darkness.
In memory of his lover, his every source of light forever lost at sea, he built a ship and named her Palmstar Poppy, hoping one day to charter the gloom of the great dark oceans …
Words & Music by David Paul Jones
Recorded 14 Feb 2008 Live @ Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
Sound by Alan Bryden
© ℗ 2008 David Paul Jones
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ABOUT
Palmstar Poppy (songs in search of love lost at sea) is a cycle of eight songs originally scored for voice and piano, first performed at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow in 2007.
I later arranged a selection of the songs for voice, piano, harp, cello and vibraphone — Wishsong, Ode To A Seafarer and Solitary Star — which were first performed at the official opening of The Sage Gateshead in 2004 performed by DPJ Ensemble featuring, Catriona McKay (harp), Robin Mason (cello), Hazel Morrison (vibraphone) and myself on vocals and piano.
The songs Ode To A Seafarer and Solitary Star have featured in many of my theatre and dance soundtracks including Dolls (2009), Uncharted Waters (2010) and We Are All Just Little Creatures (2019).
I performed the complete collection throughout the 2012 Edinburgh Festival Fringe at the Barony Bar.
I am currently working on orchestrations of the complete collection to include a chamber string orchestra for future studio release.
"David Paul Jones leans in towards the microphone and softly speaks the introduction to Palmstar Poppy. His words tell of a sea-farer casting off on a quest, searching for a love lost on a long- ago lone voyage. There's a sense of yearning after the unattainable but also that making no effort to trace his lover's final journey would be a betrayal of love itself ... The songs are simply exquisite, ranging from gossamer threads of melody underpinned by rippling piano phrases to deep, swelling piano chords, like doomsday knells, offsetting vocal lines plangent with the painful awareness of loss and finality. Between times, there are flashes of whimsicality, not just in Jones's piano soundscape but in his lyrics. He has a Lear-like readiness to frame fantasy words that conjure up places and atmospheres tingling with incalculable magic."
THE HERALD
"For an hour, Jones sat at his lone piano, under a single light, and washed his audience with ripple after ripple of rich, rocking cadences and textures, shifting from slightly sinister minor keys to sunlit major and back, as he returned to the sea again, and its Davy Jones's locker of drowned dreams"
THE SCOTSMAN